Gould help us

SOME nights I wake up in a cold sweat.
At 3 in the morning I find that my throat is dry and the bedclothes are soaked.
I try to search my brain for what has scared me to such an extent that I am frozen rigid, eyes wide, shaking uncontrollably.
Then I remember the dream. Well, not a dream, more my worst nightmare.
It is of a Bristol Rovers chairman proudly announcing that after much persuasion they have invited Bobby Gould to take charge of the Gas once again.
Then I realise it is a dream, but it still keeps me awake for the rest of the night.
Because I know Gould still lives in Portishead, just around the corner.
And various people have spotted him shopping in supermarkets in close proximity to the Mem.
Oh my word.
Younger souls may wonder why I have such an irrational fear of this man stepping back into the hot seat. I'll try to explain...

I am sure that to his nearest and dearest Bobby Gould is a lovely man, cherished by his family, idolised by those near and dear- and possibly still revered by fans of Wimbledon FC.
I know the press adore him because he is always there with a friendly smile, a little joke and a ready quote.
He can charm the birds off the trees, and certainly football chairmen have fallen over themselves to put him in charge of their clubs.
He is a political animal. He says exactly what people want to hear.
And out of every single manager the Gas have had... I hate him the most.

Logical? Well, it doesn't have to be really.
That's the nature of being a football fan.
You don't need any cast-iron reasons to hate someone, you just do.
But I'll try to explain it to those youngsters who - on reading the publicity for his new book 24-carat Gould - think he sounds like a really decent sort and a good football manager.

My first memories of Bobby Gould were when he was playing for Arsenal against Swindon Town in the 1969 League Cup final.
Arsenal lost 3-1 and Gould scored their goal.
At the end of the game he cried.
It was there for all to see.
A show for the gutted Gunners fans? I think so.
Because he is an extremely good actor.
We loved him when he joined Rovers and scored a hat-trick against Blackburn on his debut.
And, of course, he said he loved us.
Eventually he became our manager, his first job. And he did ok, without pulling up any trees.
Then, as soon as his old club Coventry City came knocking, he left us. Just like that.
We're talking about the kind of guy who kisses your badge one minute... then shoots off to another club as soon as a better offer comes along - without a glance back.
In the wisdom of our board he later came back to the club, and I know many of us weren't happy about that.
You see, football isn't like any other job where you can just up sticks and move because you've had a better offer... then return when it doesn't work out.
Again, he didn't achieve much.
We needed a tactically astute manager who would take us to another level, win us promotion or some silverware.
But Gould was more Ossie Ardiles and Kevin Keegan than Brian Clough. Let's throw everything forward and hope for the best.
He tried to woo the fans over, yes. He even got the club to pay for Gasheads to travel and support the team in an away game at Walsall.
I think we lost 5-1, but those with better memories can put me right on that.
Then, when a better offer came along, he buggered off again.

Wimbledon. His one REAL success story.
He took them to the FA Cup final and a fairytale win over Liverpool.
The Crazy Gang run by a self-proclaimed "Crazy" guy.
Not bad, eh?
Except I have a sneaky suspicion that success was down to the fact Don Howe was his first team coach.
Still, that's the job of a manager - to bring in the best people for the job, so I guess he has every right to take the credit for that.

And he will.
He tries to take the credit for everything.
The number of times I have heard him babbling on about his "successes" at Bristol Rovers, how he discovered and developed this player or that player, how he changed things around so brilliantly for us. How, any time we get a modicum of success, he somehow managed to play a part in this.
This is his modus operandi. He waits for people to forget his mistakes, the number of times he opened his mouth and put his foot in it, and sprinkles fairy dust over everything.
He rewrites his past better than anyone I know.

But my association with Gould does not just extent to my time as a Gashead.
I was working as a journalist in Wales when he took the job as their national manager.
And, yes, the press loved him.
The Football Association of Wales loved him.
He said all the right things.
He said, for example, that the League of Wales (the FAW's pride and joy) would produce players for the international team. That alone probably landed him the job.
And, in fact, he even picked one for an early international, though I don't think he got off the bench.
As a national manager, though, he was pretty damn dreadful.
The one incident I remember more than anything was when Wales had lost 7-1 to Holland.
He had made Vinny Jones the captain and his tactics and his team were well and truly crucified.
Wales fans I know were pretty suicidal. Their team seemed passionless, incompetent, clueless.
Two days later Gould turns up at a press conference... wearing a Max Wall wig on his head with 7-1 written on the forehead.
Of course, we wanted to take a picture of it and splash it across the newspaper.
"This is how your manager feels about a 7-1 defeat... he thinks it's a big joke."
But he whipped it off straight away and refused.
Understandable, because I think he would have been lynched.
Later, Wales went to Turkey in a qualifier and went down 6-4.
John Toshack, then a radio pundit, slammed Gould's gung-ho tactics.
Gould rang the Beeb and DEMANDED a right of reply, and the BBC allowed him to have his say on their Saturday Evening football programme.
He spent the whole episode referring to Toshack as "... that John Fashanu".
In press quarters he became known as GobbledeGould.
Other incidents with Wales included him turning up at a press conference with a black eye as rumours circulated he had been belted by John Hartson.
He claimed it was just a "typical bit of wrestling rough and tumble" and it was something he regularly instigated on the training ground.
Yeah, right.
And in another episode he managed to insult Nathan Blake over an incident with a bib which the player claimed was a racial slur.

Yet, for Teflon Bobby, nothing sticks.
He STILL managed to get another job.
Sam Hammam, his old boss at Wimbledon, put him in charge of Cardiff City.
He did nothing there, and the Welsh fans hadn't forgotten him making their national team a bigger laughing stock than it was already, so he didn't last long.
Since then my Welsh mates have all been warning me: He'll be back at Rovers one day.

Well, he is. In a manner of speaking.
He is launching his book at a dinner.
Oh, I do hope that the directors don't get speaking to him for too long.
I really hope they don't listen to his "take" on how things could be better at the Mem.
I hope as soon as he comes near they thrust breadsticks in their ears and walk in the other direction.
Because the old charmer will work his magic.
And one day my nightmare may come true...